Tinkering

Pertaining to an attempt to repair or improve something.

Tall Bike

I recently received a few extra bikes from a friend and decided to try making a tall bike from one of the frames. It is basically just an upside-down bike since I just flipped the frame. The seat post and handle bars needed to be longer since the pedals were so much higher. It took a bit of welding and some work getting the chain tensioned without the derailleur. It’s functional, but also a bit scary being so far from the ground. In the future, I would make the bend for the handle bars closer to the frame, as it is a bit awkward to steer.

Replacing A Fan’s Thermal Fuse

We bought a decent pedestal fan a couple years back and it randomly died recently. It still didn’t work after cleaning it so, I decided to try bypassing the thermal fuse. It worked, but I couldn’t leave it that way with any peace of mind. After using a magnifying glass to read the small print, I bought a couple new fuses online.

I soldered a new one on, but I got it too hot from the soldering iron. I did it again and left more room between the fuse and the solder point. It works great now, and it just took a cheap little fuse to fix!

Taking Apart A Freewheel

My bike recently started to develop a wobble on the back wheel. I realised that it was due to the bearings failing, so I decided to take it apart and try to fix it. I found another rear wheel that had been bent, so I had some spare parts to use.

Once I pulled the gears off, there was this piece with bearings on it. I counted and there were 88 bearings in total. There are 9 bearings on each side of the axle. There are then 39 bearings around this piece in the picture, and then 31 that go on the gear piece.

The hardest part was making sure that there was the proper amount of bearings in each part. Once I got it all back together, it worked great, and it no longer had the wobble because I replaced the broken part.

Using A DC Power Supply

I recently fixed up a portable Pulser cassette player and quickly had to deal with it’s power supply. It takes C batteries, or I could use it’s built in AC inverter. I decided to wire in a 6V DC power supply and it works great.

Since it takes 4 C batteries I got a 6V power supply. I measured the voltage from the supply and found it was outputting 7 something volts! I found out that when “cheap” power supplies are not under load, they can have a higher than expected voltage. I was a bit nervous the first time I plugged it in, but it worked great. It is much better than the alternatives and I have enjoyed the experience.

Pulser Cassette Recorder

I recently came across this cassette recorder with wires sticking out the side. I thought it was probably broken, but brought it home to look at. I opened it up and found a hack job with the wiring. Wires had been spliced into the original and covered loosely with tape.

After fixing the mess of wires, I tested it out by battery. It worked but the audio cut in and out when at full volume. I found out that one of the wires was getting pinched and after fixing that it plays great. I would like to get a 6V DC power supply instead of burning C batteries, but I have really enjoyed getting this vintage cassette recorder working.